


Two Lives, One Soul

by Spnfandom8



Category: Batman - Fandom, Supernatural
Genre: Alcoholic John Winchester, BAMF Dean Winchester, BAMF Jason Todd, Child Neglect, Dean Winchester Has Issues, Dean Winchester Needs a Hug, Dean Winchester Takes Care of Sam Winchester, Dean Winchester was a child Soldier, Dean Winchester was never a kid, I'm Bad At Tagging, Jason Todd Has Issues, Jason Todd Needs A Hug, Jason Todd was a child soldier, Let me know if i should add more tags, Mystery Twins, Neither was Jason Todd, Protective Older Brothers, Young Dean Winchester, Young Jason Todd, i don't know how to tag, sorry - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-18
Updated: 2020-10-19
Packaged: 2021-03-09 00:55:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 17,911
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27085930
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Spnfandom8/pseuds/Spnfandom8
Summary: Twins, separated at eight years old by a corrupt city. This is their story.
Comments: 4
Kudos: 43





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Enjoy. :)

“Come on Jase, don’t be like that” Dean says, looking over at his twin.   
“Be like what D? We ain't ever gonna make it outta here. It’s the truth.” Jason says, flipping over onto his stomach so that he can prop himself up enough to look at his brother.   
“It’s not, just cause’ we were born here doesn’t mean we gotta stay. The only thing we would need to get out is a bus ticket” Dean says, copying his brother and flipping over to his stomach, the both of them staring at each other over the short gap between the decaying picnic tables they’re currently laying on.   
“Yeah, and leave mom? Just cause’ she doesn’t care about us, doesn’t mean that we can just leave her” Jason answers, picking at the wood of the table.   
“Of course not, she’s mom. But, that doesn’t mean that we can’t get out when we grow up, maybe she’ll be better by then or something.” Dean answers, kicking his legs up and down behind him.  
“Come on D, you know she won’t get better, she’s not that kind of sick.” Jason answers, pushing up so that he’s standing on his table.   
“I know, but, there has to be something better than this. We’re eight now Jase, I don’t even remember how long it’s been since we’ve been able to go in the front door of our own apartment without getting beat up by one of mom’s boyfriends. I’m tired of always being scared” Dean admits, and as he looks at his brother, he knows that he feels the same way.   
“I’m tired too” Jason admits quietly, hopping off of his table and indicating for Dean to roll over so he can get onto the table with him.   
“We have to get to work soon” Dean says after a few minutes, tugging lightly on his brothers pitch black hair.   
“Yeah” Jason answers, flicking Dean’s forehead in retaliation as he rolls off the side of the table, onto the bench, and then the ground, before standing up and pushing Dean over the other side.   
“Asshole” Dean mutters.  
“fuckhead” Jason says in return, smiling as Dean pops up on the other side of the table.   
Jason slings his arm over Dean’s shoulder as they walk away from the abandoned park, hip checking and attempting to trip each other while they go, almost falling as they walk through the gates of the park.   
As soon as they exit though, they make sure to drop their arms from each others shoulders, settle bored expressions onto their faces, and draw the hoods up on their jackets, wanting to draw as little attention to themselves as possible, which is most easily done by looking like every other poor child on the streets.  
The moon is high in the sky by the time they make it to crime alley, and their shoulders are brushing with each step, knowing that two kids is harder to fuck with than one, although not by much.   
They easily collect their few tools from underneath a dumpster in a seemingly obscure alleyway, before going out to scout cars with tires that will make them enough money to get some food in their bellies.   
It’s when they’ve finally found a car, who’s owner just exited and disappeared into a known drug den, that they hear a familiar voice scream out for help.   
“Is that, Maryne?” Jason asks Dean, concern marring his face as he recalls the voice of the girl that they occasionally work with, and occasionally bunk with whenever they can't stay at the apartment.   
Dean nods, they share a quick look, and then the both of them take off running, skidding to a stop in front of a dark alleyway, although not dark enough that they can’t see their friend pinned to the wall by a man wearing a police uniform.   
It takes all of a second for them to jump into the situation, Jason calls out first, getting the attention of the man.   
“Hey asshole!” Jason yells, causing the man to look up, a creepy ass grin on his face as he takes in the two boys in the mouth of the alleyway.   
The grin falls off of his face as Dean’s wrench connects with his jaw and Jason’s with his knee, driving the man away from their friend.   
“Fucking asshole” Dean huffs out as the cop clips him in the ribs with his baton, and Jason quickly sees the hit and redirects his attention towards him, getting a kick to the gut in return.   
They work in tandem, both of them staying on opposite sides of the man and trying to get him down enough to that they can run like Marnye did, but every time one of them is far enough away to run, the other gets hit or boxed in by the cop, who refuses to give up.   
“Hey! The fucks going on!” a mans voice calls out from their only means of exit, and as Jason and Dean look up, their stomach’s drop in dread upon seeing another cop.   
Less than a minute later finds both of them shoved up against the dirty brick of the alley, handcuffs clicking tightly onto their wrists as they look at each other, determination mixed with well hidden fear showing through their eyes.   
“Fucking punks” one of the cops mutters as he drags Jason to his police car, the other purposely tripping Dean as he drags him to the same car, and they are both, thankfully, short enough not to have their heads banged into the top of the door on their way in.   
“Don’t you have to read us our rights?” Jason asks a few minutes into their drive, glaring defiantly through the grate that sits between them and the cops.   
“Sure kid, you have the right to shut the fuck up before I stop this car and make you” the cop snarls, blood dripping down his chin from where Dean initially hit him.  
“Fuck you, you fucking pervert!” Dean snarls, spitting through the grate and into the hair of the man in front of him.   
Dean freezes up in fear as the man suddenly pulls his gun, aiming it at Jason as he spins in his seat.   
“Listen here you little shit, one more word outta either of you, and i’m gonna shoot your little punk friend” he growls, punching the grate to startle them before he turns back around.   
Jason and Dean are silent after that, although they do scoot closer together on the bench seat, until they are pressed together from shoulder to knee, neither of them wanting to lose contact with the other.   
They both let out a sigh of relief when they actually pull up to a police station, instead of the multitude of other places that they’ve heard street kids get disappeared to when arrested.   
As soon as the door is opened and they are pulled out onto the sidewalk, they share a quick look before they both take cheap shots at the cops grasping their shoulders and make a run for it.   
Jason doesn’t make it far, him having had to run past both his cop and Dean’s, and Dean’s is recovered enough to tackle him to the asphalt, he can’t help the muffled scream that makes its way out of his mouth when the man lands on top of him, knocking the breath out of him and crushing his arm into the asphalt at an odd angle.   
He watches as Dean hears him, and then slips on the sidewalk as he spins around, barely saving himself from crashing to the ground as he runs full tilt at the cop that’s on top of Jason, he rams his knee into the cop’s face before the other one can stop him.   
Dean and Jason are bleeding, breathing hard, and grinning as they are marched into the police station, they might be the ones in cuffs, but the cops are the ones that are bleeding and bruised from a fight with two eight year old’s.   
The grins though, slide off of their faces as they are suddenly steered in two different directions.


	2. Chapter 2

Dean’s eyes widen in fear and he suddenly throws his weight in the direction that the other cop is pulling his brother, who is doing the same thing, and they both realise with dread that the cops are now the ones with smirks on their faces.   
“Jason!”   
“Dean!” they call for each other, but aside from a few bored glances, they are ignored as they are dragged to opposite sides of the station, suddenly unsure about what’s happening.   
The only information that the cops get when they attempt to interrogate the two boys is questions about the other, and the only prior information that they have is their first names, because they were yelling for each other when they were separated.   
The boys don’t know to fight when Dean is sent to an orphanage and Jason to juvie.   
They try to fight when they realise that their other half isn’t where they were sent, like they were expecting, hoping. By then the damage is done. Aside from birth certificates, which neither the police nor Dean and Jason have, there isn’t anything connecting the boys.   
They’ve never been arrested before, they don’t have doctors records because they never went, they don’t have family to tie them together because their mother doesn’t own a phone, and most likely wouldn’t pick up if she did. They can’t get DNA testing done on each other, because they don’t know where the other one is, and the only people to know that they were arrested together, are the cops that separated them.   
Dean knows to fight when the orphanage tells him that somebody came forward and claimed him, that there was a man who didn’t know that Dean’s mother had been pregnant with him, but had found an old letter addressed to him at his mother’s house, hidden in a box under her bed, telling him of her pregnancy.   
He had apparently been searching for his child, the letter didn’t mention twins, for years, and since Dean was put into the system, and eventually gave his last name to the lady running it, John Winchester was alerted to the fact that his son was in the system.   
He took his newly pregnant wife Mary, and they drove down to Gotham.   
It was an awkward first meeting, Dean didn’t know what to do with a father he knew nothing about, and John didn’t know what to do with a son that he didn’t know about.   
Mary was their saving grace, breaking the tension between them and asking Dean how he came to be in an orphanage.   
“There was a cop who was trying to hurt one of our friends and me and Jason stopped him, but then the cop had a friend and we got arrested, then we tried to run away and we made them mad and then they took me away from him and I haven’t seen him since” Dean spills out all at once, those words being the first that they’ve heard from the young boy.   
“Wait wait wait, Dean, who are you talking about? Who did they separate you from?” Mary asks, wondering who he’s talking about.   
“My brother. I haven’t seen him in three weeks and everyone keeps telling me that i’m making stuff up but i’m not, I swear i’m not. The cops were mad at us and they hurt him and then they took us to different rooms and I haven’t seen him since and nobody will listen to me!” Dean rants, becoming hysterical the longer he talks to the strangers that walked into the room.   
“What’s his name?” John asks, speaking up for the first time since he walked into the room and said hello to his son.   
“Jason Todd, his name is Jason Todd! My name is Dean Todd and nobody will listen to me and they keep saying that they don’t have any kids under that name and that they’ve never had any kid come in under that name. They-they won’t listen to me and I just, I want my brother” Dean pleads, thankful that somebody is listening to him, something that hasn’t happened in the last three weeks.   
“How can this happen? Shouldn’t Catherine have come and gotten you by now?” John asks, trying to keep Dean calm, even in the face of his own un-calmness.   
“Jason wouldn’t have given them his name, and they probably won’t even be able to find mom. She doesn’t have a phone, and she’s been living in her dead ex-boyfriends apartment for the last year, nobody knows where she is and she doesn’t even pay rent on the apartment, her new boyfriend does. I’m not making it up” Dean says meekly, hoping that they believe him.   
“We’ll try to find him, okay?” John says, not really knowing how he’ll go about doing that, but knowing that he needs to try.   
“Really?” Dean asks, peering up at him through too-long hair, his soft green eyes full of hope.  
“Really” Mary answers, reaching out and taking the boys hand with a smile.   
“Thank you” he murmurs.   
The next hour or so is spent signing papers and collecting the few things Dean had on him from his ‘room’ at the orphanage, and after that, Mary and John drive Dean to where he says that his mothers apartment is.   
He feels his chest tighten in anxiety when he uses his key to open the front door, and he feels his whole world breaking apart when he sees the empty apartment, everything of value moved out, and he sees both his and Jason’s things inside their closet, the only things left behind being their clothes.   
“No” he says, his voice cracking as he tries to push down the tears, his efforts are null though, and he seemingly melts to the floor as the tears stream down his face, his breath getting stuck in his throat along with a tight ball of fear.   
His hands shake as he shoves this things into the small duffel bag on his side of the closet, Mary and John watching him break and not knowing what to do, they watch as he takes half of the clothes before moving over to the middle of the room and prying up a loose floorboard, revealing a Batman lunchbox.   
He opens the box and pulls out a picture of him and another smiling boy, leaving the copy behind, he takes out a leather bracelet and same as with the picture, leaves the copy in the box, the last thing he pulls from the box is one of two batarangs. He leaves the stack of money in the box as he closes it up, putting the picture into his bag with the batarang and slipping the bracelet onto his wrist, he wipes tears from his cheeks before nodding at the two adults behind him.   
They stay in Gotham for another month, looking for a raven-haired boy named Jason Todd, but they don’t find any traces. Dean sneaks away from the hotel room that John and Mary have at night to go check all of their usual places, he asks their friends questions, but none of them have answers. He finds Maryne with her sister, and she thanks him for helping her, but again, hasn’t seen or heard from Jason.   
John and Mary search all the legal routes, and come up with nothing, not able to find Catherine or Jason Todd, aside from a few records for Catherine renting an apartment. They are laughed out of the social services office when they decide to ask them about the boy, being told that if he was never in their system, that they won’t be able to find him. They were told that there were so many kids living on the streets, that they were more likely to find a certain rat than a certain child.   
Dean destroys the hotel room when John tells him that they have to go back to Lawrence Kansas, that Dean is coming with them, and that they can’t find Jason, that for all intents and purposes, he doesn’t even exist.   
John finds himself crying for the first time in a very long time as he watches his son sit in the wreckage of the hotel room and sob, pleading to stay, for them to just leave him so that he can find Jason.   
The next day, Dean is sitting red eyed and angry in the back of a 1967 Chevrolet Impala as it drives away from Gotham, leaving his brother, his twin, behind.


	3. Chapter 3

Jason Todd doesn’t know to fight when he’s sent to Juvie, because he’s expecting, hoping, that his brother is on his way there as well.   
He doesn’t fight when after the first day, there’s no sign of him.   
He fights when after a week of searching, asking, bribing, and threatening, he realises that his brother really isn’t there.   
It’s too late. The damage is done.   
He asks anyone with authority that he can see about his brother, and he’s laughed at. He’s told that he’s making things up, that he couldn’t possibly have a brother, because he didn’t even have a real name.   
He never told them his last name, knowing from the laughs and ridicule he underwent everytime he asked about his family, that he wouldn’t get anything for telling them his last name.   
Three months passed while Jason fought and attempted to bribe himself information on his brother. Four months passed and he was desperate to see his other half, his family.   
Five months passed and he was finally released due to overcrowding, overcrowding which had led to underfeeding, less supervision, more fights, and less blankets.   
The first thing he did when his clothes were shoved into his hands and he was shoved out the door, was go to his apartment, he snuck in the window and tried to keep himself calm when he saw that nothing was left in the shithole.   
He tried to keep himself calm when he went to his and Dean’s bedroom to find only his clothes behind, and he couldn’t stop the tears from falling from his eyes when he pulled his copy of their favorite picture of the two of them from the batbox, along with his leather bracelet and batarang, there is also about four hundred dollars in the box, which, instead of being halved, like Jason was expecting, is all there, meaning Dean left it all for him.   
He tries to calm his breathing when he finds a messily scrawled note in Dean’s handwriting in the bottom of the box, weighted down with the money.   
“Jason. I don’t know if you are going to find this. I told the lady where I was staying my last name, and two people came to get me. One of them is our dad. They want to take me home with them and they said they would help me find you. I’ve been everywhere we usually are and I asked all of our friends if they knew anything. I can’t find you. I think I'm safe with the people that came to get me, but they want to take me to kansas, their names are John and Mary. if you get this, please come find me.”  
Jason reads the letter over and over, tears streaming down his face as he wonders how he’s supposed to find his brother based off of two first names and a state.   
A month later, John and Mary Winchester are sitting in bed together, Mary with a round belly, and Dean in his room down the hall from them.   
“What if he was making it up?” Mary asks her husband, her hand resting on her stomach as she speaks.   
“Why would he do that?” John asks, although he’s beginning to think the same thing.   
“Maybe he didn’t want to leave Gotham. John, we haven’t found any trace of this boy existing, Dean destroyed his room today because he freaked out that he didn’t put our last names on the letter. I don’t even know what he was talking about, but when he told me that we had to go to back to Gotham, and I told him no, he locked me out of his room and destroyed it. I think maybe we should take him to a therapist, I love him John, he is such a sweet boy, but when it comes to Jason? He gets so emotional. So angry. Sad. I just, I don’t know if he made him up or if he’s real, but he needs help.” Mary tells her husband, looking over at him as she takes his hand in hers.   
“I know. I can’t… I can’t tell if he’s telling the truth, or if he just thinks he’s telling the truth, he’s always got that picture with him, but all that proves is he’s got a friend. He’s such a sweet kid, he helps you out around the house all day, and he never asks for anything, even though he doesn’t have anything. He always asks me if he can help me work on the car, and he’s quiet Mary, he’s real quiet... I’ll make a few calls tomorrow, see if I can get him some help.” John says leaning over to kiss her before he turns their light out, the both of them rolling over to go to sleep.   
Dean sits in his room, wiping stray tears from his eyes as he thinks about Jason, about how long it’s been since they’ve seen each other, and then he stands up, and he puts his room back together. Piece by piece. He rights flipped over furniture, makes his bed, puts the toys that Mary bought him back in the toybox, his new clothes back in his closet.   
He thinks back to when John brought him up for bed, when he looked around the room and told him he would help him clean it all up the next morning, he remembers the worried look on Mary’s face when he finally opened his door, hours after he slammed it on her and locked it, taking his anger out on the room.   
He remembers the concern on her face as she took his hand, bloody and bruised from where he slammed it against the wall, how she bandaged him up, kissed his hand, and told him that everything would be alright.   
He draws the blankets over his shoulders as he feel something wash over him, something that feels a little bit like love.   
It’s then that he gets mad again, throwing his blankets off of his body and rolling them into a ball, trapping his arms inside of it so that he can’t do any more damage to his room, then he buried his face in the comforter and screams.   
He screams until his throat hurts and his lungs are fighting for air, and then he screams some more. He screams until Mary and John hear him and come rushing into his room, finding it tidy, and finding him folded against the blankets, his arms tangled and his face buried, and as Mary gently pulls him up by his shoulder, he stops screaming.   
His throat hurts but he can’t stop sobbing.   
His eyes sting and his nose runs, but he can’t stop the tears from coming.   
His chest aches, but he can’t help the small rush of emotion when Mary pulls him into her chest, John settling onto the bed next to him and rubbing his back, attempting to calm him down.   
He doesn’t want to love them. He wants his brother.   
He can’t explain why he was screaming when they ask.   
He doesn’t know how to tell them that he doesn’t want to love them, because the only person that he’s ever loved was Jason, he doesn’t want to tell them that he feels guilty, because he knows that wherever Jason is, it isn’t here, with their dad. With Mary, who is the nicest woman that Dean’s ever met. He doesn’t want to tell them that he misses his twin so much that it hurts, that all he wants to do, despite loving them, is run back to Gotham to look for him.   
As he sits there, silently wishing for his brother back, his brother is standing in a Gotham alleyway, blood on his fists and in his mouth.   
Jason glares at the boy he’s fighting, the boy that’s two years older than him and has obviously gotten more meals than Jason has.   
He takes the elbow glancing off of his chin with a mirthless smirk, and then attacks twice as viciously. He’s angry, because it’s been six months since he’s seen Dean, and he misses him. He’s angry because with all of the street smarts that he’s gathered over the years, with all of the hours spent in the library, he can’t find him. He’s angry because the one person that he cared about, more than anything else, more than anybody else, including himself, is gone. All he has left is a letter with not enough details, about three hundred dollars left, and his anger. He uses that anger to beat the boy until he’s laying on the ground groaning, and then he takes the bet money from the other kids around the circle and he walks away. He puts the money, not much, into his bag along with the rest of his things, and he goes back to his mothers new apartment, with her new boyfriend. And he hates it.


	4. Chapter 4

John and Mary get Dean a therapist, and although she doesn’t actually help him with Jason, because he isn’t making him up. She does help him figure out how to make sure that John and Mary don’t see when he has a really bad day, when he misses Jason so much he goes to the bus station and sits there, wondering what would happen if he were to buy a ticket to Gotham.   
She points out things about Dean that could be worrying Mary and John, and she tells him things about himself that simply make it easier to hide. He learns how to put on different masks, not simply the ones he used in Gotham, which were mostly a poor kid with big green eyes, the street rat that nobody should mess with, and himself.   
He learns to run to the woods behind their house when he’s overwhelmed, and he’s learned not to punch trees, because it worries them when he hurts himself, but to punch the ground instead, which is less likely to split the skin.   
He learns a lot from therapy, nothing that any of them thought he would though.   
He also learns a lot from school, but again, not anything that they thought he would.   
He learns to call Mary and John, Mom and Dad, and he thinks it’ll be good practice for when Mary has her baby, because he doesn’t want to confuse it when he calls them Mary and John.   
He learns that kids here aren’t nearly as street smart as he is, they also know a lot of different things, him and them, he learns how to be polite enough to get his teachers to like him, and rebellious enough for his classmates to fear him.   
He learns not to talk about Jason, because it makes John and Mary, Mom and Dad, get these funny looks on their faces, and then they start to treat him more like a little kid.   
He doesn’t like that.   
So he stops mentioning Jason, but he keeps their picture, their bracelet, and their batarang.   
Jason on the other hand, ignores the fact that his mother hasn’t realised that Dean is gone yet, and spends more time in the small fighting rings than he should, he always keeps his bracelet on, his batarang in his pocket, and their picture in the wallet he’s started carrying.   
He keeps to a lot of the same routines that him and Dean were used to, except he designates a lot more time to the library than they used to, this time is spent looking for Dean using the computers.   
By the time Sammy is born, Jason has grown accustomed to his new reality, missing his twin, and Dean has grown used to the same. The pain sticks around, tightening their chests every time something reminds one of the other. Their birthdays are spent in anger and sadness, and Dean tells John and Mary that he just doesn’t like birthdays.   
Dean finds it easier to cope with the pain of missing Jason by using Sammy, he spends a lot of time checking on him and Mary, he holds him a lot, and most days, John will come home to them laying on the floor together, Mary on the couch watching them.   
Jason uses books to fill the hole that his brother left, not that either of their coping mechanisms work really, but they do distract. Jason can’t deny that getting lost in books is his best escape from reality, and Dean can’t deny that his baby brother is his.   
It’s six months after his little brother is born that Dean’s life is once again thrust into chaos.   
He’s given his baby brother and told to run, and horror clogs this throat when he sees only his father emerge from the fiery house, he had seen Mary on the ceiling when John gave him Sammy, but he had hoped that she had been okay, that he had still been a little asleep, that he had seen it wrong. He hadn’t.   
A year and a half since he’s seen Jason, a year and a half was all it took for this fragile safeness to fall apart beneath his feet.   
It didn’t take long for his father to begin going on about monsters, and at first Dean didn’t believe him, but it didn’t take long to convince him, and once he was convinced, it was his new obsession. Instead of taking care of Sammy as his coping mechanism, he trained to hunt. His father changed from the man he knew, he liked alcohol like his mother liked drugs, but he wasn’t as bad, as neglectful, he didn’t bring people home who would hurt him and Sammy, so Dean didn’t say anything, just took care of John when he needed him to.   
Dean didn’t say anything when they began travelling across the country, didn’t say anything when John, his dad, took him on his first hunt when he turned ten. Even though some part of him knew it was wrong to take a child to fight monsters, Dean liked the outlet for his anger more than he liked scrutinising what his father should and shouldn’t be doing.   
Taking care of Sammy became something that was as easy as breathing, he loved him, he was his brother, and he was a good baby. He didn’t mind parenting him, didn’t mind helping him with his schoolwork when he was old enough, didn’t mind cooking him dinner and taking him to the park and the library. It reminded him of Jason in a good way, and hunting let him be angry at the world, angry at the cops that hurt them, angry at everything that came together to separate him from his brother.   
He let his life become about protecting the brother he had within his grasp, and hunting to channel his anger about the one he didn't. He kept up good grades because it was easy, he fought in school because hunting was never enough for him not to be angry. And he learned that the charming kid in leather jacket inspired fear and respect in the right people, and although he usually had to show them that he wasn’t a poser in a leather jacket, it never took more than a fight or two for people to learn not to fuck with him.   
He let his Gotham street rat show when he was fighting, when he was hunting. He let his pain bleed through. It was all he allowed though, never wanting to taint Sammy with the same anger that he’d been carrying around his whole life.   
Meanwhile, Jason continued to use fighting and the library as his escapes, he didn’t want to connect with anybody else, because all it had gotten him was hurt, so while he would never regret having Dean as his brother, he wasn’t about to willingly put himself in that position again.   
Which is why, when he tried to steal the tires off the Batmobile, when Bruce took him in, he was so resistant to Dick’s overbearing hugs, Alfred’s cooking lessons and his attempts to teach him manners. Why he was so unwilling to connect with Bruce. At first. Like his twin, years earlier, it was so hard for him to open up, to love, other people, when the only other person he had ever trusted, loved, was his brother, who wasn’t there to tell him it was okay, the simple fact that he wasn’t there made it so hard for Jason to open up to them.   
But the fact that he and Dean had had each other, meant that he didn’t have to learn how to properly, healthily, love somebody, he just had to allow himself to admit to loving them, to seeing them as his family.   
He never told them about Dean, but they knew about him anyway, at least that he was somebody that Jason loved. They saw the picture that was always in his wallet, they saw the searches on the Batcomputer, Dean Todd, Mary and John, Kansas. They saw how much he did and didn’t struggle to love them.   
They saw how much anger he had when he went out as Robin, how he was always already angry when he went out, that it didn’t take anything special to rile him up. How he was always ready for a fight, whether or not he should have engaged. They might not have put it all together, but they saw them as individual pieces of the puzzle.  
It was when Jason was fifteen that everything changed.   
He was killed.   
Dean was sick in bed for days, he didn’t know why it felt like someone had carved a hole in his chest, but it did. He didn’t know why he felt like crying. But he did.   
John was off on a hunt when it happened, but Sam was there, and he was scared. He didn’t know why his unshakeable big brother was lying in bed crying, looking like he’d been stomped on by an elephant. He was only six. He didn’t understand, but he did know how to make himself cereal or soup when he was hungry, he knew to bring Dean soup and make sure he drank water.   
By the time Dean got out of bed, he had realised that the hole in his chest wasn’t going to go away, but the physical pain passed, so he pulled himself out of bed and into the shower. Then he made Sammy some real food, and he put him to bed for the first time in four days, he lied and he told him that he was okay.   
He wasn’t.   
It wasn’t until he was seventeen that the hole went away, he isn’t sure exactly when, because he had grown so used to the hollow feeling, that he hadn’t realised when it started fading.   
He never told anyone about it, not even Sammy when he asked. He never told John, knowing that the man wouldn’t have really cared, would have given him that same look that he used to give him when he mentioned his twin.   
So while the hole in Dean’s chest faded, Jason raged. His once piercing blue eyes turned a glowing green, his pitch hair now had a streak of stark white through the front of it. He was experiencing pit rage.   
Dean never stopped looking for his brother, although as he grew up it moved to the back burner, something to work on when he had time off, when he was supposed to be doing homework, or he was injured. It became less of an obsession as time went on, and the same applied for Jason.   
He went from using every spare, and not spare, minute looking for his brother, to doing it when he was in between cases, or when he was injured and had some down time.   
By the time Jason was back on civil terms with his family, Dean had gotten his GED and began hunting full time, although he tended to work in or around the town that him and Sammy were staying in at the time, John off on his own, usually states away.   
By the time Sammy is eighteen, he’s applied to seven different colleges, and is waiting on acceptance letters. He doesn’t tell Dean, but he knows anyway. Dean doesn’t tell John, but he finds out. John tells Sammy that if he walks out the door, he’s not ever welcome back, Sam walks out the door, and Dean is angry.   
He might not blame John for losing Jason, but he doesn’t find him faultless, he knows that if he had stayed in Gotham he would have found his brother. What he does blame him completely for, is losing another brother.   
He knows that John is the reason that Sammy cuts contact, he knows that John regrets what he said, but he can’t find it in himself to care. John pushed his brother away, and Dean was angry, so John left. He decided that it was time they hunt on their own, he called Dean periodically to let him know that he wasn’t dead, and occasionally to tell him where a hunt was located.   
It was then that Dean knew, really knew, that the man he met when he was eight was gone. That the man who bandaged his hands when he got so angry he hit walls, trees, and other kids, was gone. The man who sang to him when he had nightmares, gone. The man who loved his wife and sons more than anything else, gone. He knew that all his father really cared about anymore, was revenge, hunting the yellow eyed demon. He knew that on some paternal level, his father loved him and Sam, he was just incapable of showing it anymore. It didn’t make him love his father any less, didn’t make him follow his orders any less, it just made him… sad.   
He took his anger about his missing twin, his sadness at his broken father, his despair at another brother gone, this time of his own doing, and he channeled it into his masks, he made himself the most charming, darkly humored, flirty guy around. He wanted to fit in wherever he went, didn’t want questions. So he flirted with anything with a pulse, he smirked at anything, made everything into a joke, he shoved all of his real emotions down, he used those feelings to create something new, someone, new.   
When his father disappeared he went and retrieved his baby brother, he dragged him back into hunting, and they searched.   
They went through a lot before they found him, and even then, it didn’t last long, it wasn’t a few days before disaster struck and John sacrificed himself for Dean.   
It didn’t end there though. It never does.   
Sammy died.   
A deal was made.   
Dean went to hell.   
Jason felt an utterly empty pain in the center of his chest, one which passed after four months, but wasn’t any less painful or confusing than when it happened to Dean years earlier.   
Dean was gripped tight and raised from perdition.   
Sam and Dean started and stopped the apocalypse.   
Sam was possessed by Lucifer.   
Dean finds normal.   
Sam returns soulless.   
They fix it.   
Dean goes to purgatory.   
Sam finds normal.   
Dean returns without Cas.   
They find him.   
Sam and Dean catch a case in Gotham.   
Dean is scared to go home, scared to find out that his brother has been dead, or is apart of one of the many gangs.   
He’s scared to know what happened to his twin, because even though he’s been searching for him since they were separated, John made sure that they never took cases in Gotham, and Dean was always too afraid of finding out something he didn’t want to know, that he didn’t question it.


	5. Chapter 5

“Demons” Sam says as he turns down the music, getting a mock glare from Dean as he does so.   
“Yeah, I figured. Been leaving a trail of mangled meat-suits behind” Dean replies, his breath catching as he tops the hill before the bridge to Gotham City, and he sees his home city.   
Sam looks at him questioningly, but Dean just shrugs it off, clearing his throat and telling Sam to get on with the case.   
“The latest body to drop was a few hours ago, meaning that police might still be on scene, but we should still go check it out” Sam says, closing the lid of his laptop as they enter Gotham.   
“Cool, we can change once we find a motel” Dean says, his voice rough as he tries not to look around at the familiar buildings, buildings that haven’t exactly changed since he last lived there.   
“Dean?” Sam questions, looking over at his brother.   
“Hmm?” Dean answers, keeping his eyes firmly on the road.   
“What’s going on with you? Ever since we took this case you’ve been acting weird” Sam says.   
“Nothing, this isn’t the nicest place to be though, why do you think dad turned down all the cases that were in Gotham?” Dean says, turning the radio back on, this time turning it down so that it plays softly in the background.   
“I don’t know, he always acted really weird whenever Gotham was brought up” Sam says, looking over at Dean for answers.   
“It’s dangerous, lot’s of fucking psychos call this place home” Dean answers simply, not wanting to tell Sam the truth.  
“We hunt monsters Dean, we stopped the apocalypse, locked Lucifer back up in hell. We’ve both died. Dangerous doesn’t bother you any more than it does me. Don’t lie to me.” Sam says, shifting in his seat to stare incredulously at his brother, who shifts uncomfortably in his seat.   
“It’s nothing, this place just has me on edge” Dean says as he pulls into the parking lot of a motel, ignoring Sam when he scoffs, obviously not believing him.   
A few minutes later they have their bags in the room and their monkey suits on, FBI badges in their jacket pockets, and are on their way back to the car.   
Dean turns the radio up when they get in the car, and Sam leaves it as they drive to the crime scene, obviously not happy with Dean.   
The crime scene does nothing but confirm their demon theory, with sulfur around where the body was found, and internal injuries being the cause of death, they are certain that Gotham has a demon problem.   
Dean doesn’t miss the man tailing them, him specifically, but Sam does. It’s past ten when they get back to their room, having stopped at a bar to ask a few questions, and at a diner to get dinner, so Sam isn’t surprised when Dean changes back into his regular clothes and tells Sam that he’s heading back to the bar they were just at.   
“Be careful, please” is all Sam says as Dean walks out the door, Sam being long used to Dean leaving Sam to research while Dean leaves to get drunk.   
Dean just chuckles as he slams the motel door closed behind him, but the smile fades from his face as he turns from the door, and he ducks his head down as he starts walking along the sidewalk, knowing exactly where he’s going.   
He keeps track of the man following him as he ducks down side streets and alleys on his way to the abandoned park that him and Jason were at the day they were arrested.   
It takes him about a half an hour to walk there, but he likes the quiet, the dark, the time spent without having to wear his mask, and although there is somebody tailing him, they don’t seem to be currently malicious, so Dean absorbs as much of the peace as he can.   
A sad sort of smile makes its way onto his face as he stops at the entrance to the abandoned park, which is a fuck-ton more overgrown than it used to be, but he can still make out parts of the sign, and the playground when he looks through the vine covered fence.   
All it takes is a few minutes of cutting vines with his pocket knife to be able to open the gates, and when he does, he moves easily over to the picnic tables located near the back end of the park, and although the park is pitch black, he’s been walking in darkness for a while, and his eyes are already adjusted.   
He almost laughs when the wood of the table crumbles beneath his fingers as he grasps the edge of the table.   
He decides instead to sit on the damp grass beside the tables, laying back onto the ground a few moments later, finding peace in watching the stars like he used to do so often with his brother.   
His hand twitches towards his gun when the man that’s been following him moves closer still, this time standing in the shadow that the trees cast, a more full dark encompassing the man than the one surrounding Dean.   
“You know, i’m not sure who you are, but if you aren’t here to kill me, I would appreciate if you would just come out and talk to me. If you are here to kill me, same offer really, come out and try, I hate the suspense.” Dean says from where he lays, tilting his head towards the shadows where he knows the man is standing.   
“You aren’t FBI” the man says as he steps out into the moonlight, and Dean’s eyes widen on the black and red suit, mechanical looking wings tucked in behind the man’s back.   
“You’re Red Robin” Dean replies as he pushes himself to sitting.   
“How’d you know I was following you?” the man asks, tilting his head to the side.   
“You're not the first person to follow me. Why are you following me though, you don’t seem like you wanna kill me or anything” Dean says, leaning back against the bench of the picnic table as Red Robin stands a few feet from him.   
“Why did you come here? It’s odd for someone posing as an FBI agent to come stargazing at an abandoned park, especially because you knew exactly where this place was, and you didn’t have directions on you” Red Robin replies, not answering his question.   
“Can you keep a secret?” Dean asks, tipping his head back to lay against the bench, his eyes closed.   
“It depends” Red Robin replies, wondering where exactly this is going.   
Dean chuckles, having expected that answer.   
“That’s good enough for me” he says as he calms his laughter.   
“I was born here, not this park, Gotham City. I had a twin brother, have? i’m not sure really. We didn’t know anything about our father and our mother was a junkie, lots of abusive boyfriends. Anyway, we spent a lot of time living on the streets. When we were eight, we got arrested and separated. I got adopted by our biological father and his wife, and Jason disappeared. I haven’t been able to find him since, my step mother died in a fire when I was nine. My father sacrificed himself to save my life a few years back, and I have a baby brother, who doesn’t know that one, he’s technically my half brother, and two, that he might have another half brother somewhere. He keeps asking me why i’m acting weird, and I don’t know how to tell him that it’s because I’m actually from here, that I still feel like half of me is fucking missing, because I also have a twin that he knows nothing about. That i’m adopted, that neither me or our father ever told him the truth. And to answer your question, i’m in this park, because it’s where me and my brother were hanging out a few hours before we were arrested and I never saw him again.” Dean says, cracking an eye open when he gets silence in return.   
He sees Red Robin staring down at him, concern marring his features, even covered in a domino mask.   
“Why are you telling me this?” he asks after a moment.   
“I don’t have anyone else to tell, why not the vigilante who’s been following me around the last couple hours? Besides, who are you going to tell? Batman? Not like he can do anything about it, not like he cares, not like you do either. You were following me because i’m not really an FBI agent, you're right, i’m not. I’m working a case though, there are things in the world that you don’t want to know about. Those things are my job, I won’t be causing you any trouble. I just wanna finish this case and get the fuck out of this city.” Dean says as he pushes to his feet, shoving his hands into his pockets as he exits the park, and Red Robin lets him go, not sure about what to do with the information he’s been given.


	6. Chapter 6

Dean, instead of going back to the motel room like he had planned, makes a ‘quick’ pit-stop at the bar he told Sam he was going to.   
A few hours later finds him piss-drunk and downing another shot of whiskey.   
He doesn’t really know why he thought it was a good idea to tell Red Robin of all people the secret he’s been toting around since he was eight. Another shot of whiskey wipes the thought from his mind.   
Another two and he’s out the door of the bar, walking back to the motel with a slight slur in his voice and a small shuffle in his step, which is impressive, considering he drank about a half a bottle of whiskey in under four hours.   
Sam is sleeping when he gets to the motel room, and he makes sure to keep quiet as he closes the door and moves over to his bed, the one closest to the door, and sits on the edge.   
He sits there for longer than necessary, simply watching his brother’s even breaths, wondering when his small lie to not confuse his baby brother became such a big secret, when it’s become something with the potential to hurt him.   
He wonders when their lives, dying, being brought back, fighting Lucifer and occasionally teaming up with the king of hell, being best friends with a fucking angel, became normal. When things like gods and angels and leviathans stopped shocking him, when it just became something else in the long list of monsters that they’ve fought and won against. He laughs then, quietly enough not to disturb his brother, and flops backwards onto his bed, rolling over onto his stomach a moment later.   
He lays there and laughs into his pillow, he ignores the tears that are soaking into the fabric, ignores the pain in his stomach that makes him want to curl into a ball, and he simply laughs.   
What he doesn’t see is when Sam does wake up, when he turns his head to check on his brother, and finds him laughing maniacally into his pillow, finds his hands fisted into the blankets beside him, his body taught as a string.   
He contemplates saying something, alerting him to his presence, but he knows that Dean would play it off as him being drunk, but Sam has seen enough drunk Dean moments in his life not to believe that. He knows that there is something wrong with his brother. He knows he’s hurting, he just doesn’t know why.   
So he lays there, he waits for Dean to get whatever it is out of his system, waits for him to fall asleep, and then goes back to sleep himself, withholding dozens of questions as he drifts off.   
Meanwhile, on the other side of town, Red Robin is just finishing up his patrol for the night, his mind still occupied by the man from the park, the one he was following because he was lying about being an FBI agent, and because he was working the case that Bruce and Jason are currently working.   
He can’t seem to get the encounter out of his mind, how the man knew he was there, told him a secret. He doesn’t know why he can’t forget it, but it’s been nagging at the back of his mind at every corner, every thug he’s beat up tonight, every drug dealer he’s gotten arrested.   
He’s distracted as he dismounts his bike in the Batcave, he’s distracted when Bruce asks his how patrol went, and he’s distracted while he showers the night off.   
So distracted, that instead of going to bed, like he usually would after a late patrol, he goes straight to the Batcomputer and pulls up his cowl-cam from the night. He knows that Bruce and Jason are watching him closely, he knows that they can sense something off with him, so he beckons them closer.   
“There was this guy, I was following him because he showed up at the newest crime-scene for the case you guys have been working together. Him and his partner were posing as FBI agents, so I followed him to a park, it was before I was supposed to start patrol, I had time. He told me something, he knew I was there, and I can’t get it out of my head, it’s been distracting me all night and I-I want to help him, and I don’t know why. We all know that fake FBI agents usually means nothing good, but I just, I don’t know. You guys look, I need a second opinion” Tim says, knowing that it’s been a few days since he’s gotten any sleep, and that it might be throwing his judgement off, could be why he’s so focussed on this guy.   
He shakes his head and runs his hand through his hair before he hits play, skipping through the parts with him running across the rooftops, and stopping when he gets to the crime scene that Bruce asked him to check out earlier.   
They watch as the two men show up, flash their badges, which as Tim’s cowl zooms in, they can see are fake, and move onto the crime scene. They are surprisingly professional for fake FBI agents, and they seem to actually be looking through the scene for something. The older one runs his fingers through a yellow-ish substance, sniffs it, and then calls his partner over. They ask the cops a few standard questions before getting back in their car and taking off.   
Tim skips the bar visit and their dinner, knowing that it isn’t important, before stopping when they get to the motel.   
It cuts to just audio when they close the door behind them, and the older one changes quickly out of his suit and into jeans, a metallica tee, a flannel button up with his leather jacket on over top, finally lacing up a pair of boots similar to the ones that Jason wears, before telling his partner that he’s heading back to the bar.   
“This is where it gets weird” Tim says as he shuts the motel door behind him, laughing as he goes, but the smile seemingly melts off of his face as he turns around, shoving his hands into his pockets and ducking his head down.   
He stays that way as he takes short cuts and alleyways all the way to the abandoned park on Miller Street, they watch as he chuckles a little at the overgrown park, before pulling out a pocket knife and cutting through the vines keeping the gate closed.   
He pushes it open a moment later, walking in, followed closely by Tim.   
They watch as Tim slides into the shadows of the trees, the man now laying down between two picnic benches, a few moments pass in silence before the man speaks up, surprising Bruce and Jason.   
Jason recognises the park, and he’s got a sick feeling in his stomach, but he let’s none of it show, instead shifting slightly on his feet as he watches, riveted.   
“You know, i’m not sure who you are, but if you aren’t here to kill me, I would appreciate if you would just come out and talk to me. If you are here to kill me, same offer really, come out and try, I hate the suspense.” the man says, tipping his head towards where Tim is standing against the fence.   
“You aren’t FBI” Tim leads with, a note of suspicion in his voice.   
“You’re Red Robin” the man replies, obviously not having expected that as he pushes himself to a sitting position.   
“How’d you know I was following you?” Tim asks, not answering anything.   
“You're not the first person to follow me. Why are you following me though, you don’t seem like you wanna kill me or anything” the man says as he shifts so that he’s leaning against the bench of the picnic table.   
“Why did you come here? It’s odd for someone posing as an FBI agent to come stargazing at an abandoned park, especially because you knew exactly where this place was, and you didn’t have directions on you” Tim asks.   
Bruce looks over at his son as he draws a sharp breath in, his face pale and his eyebrows furrowed as he watches the exchange.   
“Can you keep a secret?” the man asks, obviously not intending on answering Tim’s question.   
“It depends” Tim replies, wanting to keep the man talking, but not wanting to commit to anything.   
“That’s good enough for me” the man answers, chuckling.   
“I was born here, not this park, Gotham City. I had a twin brother, have? i’m not sure really. We didn’t know anything about our father and our mother was a junkie, lots of abusive boyfriends. Anyway, we spent a lot of time living on the streets. When we were eight, we got arrested and separated. I got adopted by our biological father and his wife, and Jason disappeared. I haven’t been able to find him since, my step mother died in a fire when I was nine. My father sacrificed himself to save my life a few years back, and I have a baby brother, who doesn’t know that one, he’s technically my half brother, and two, that he might have another half brother somewhere. He keeps asking me why i’m acting weird, and I don’t know how to tell him that it’s because I’m actually from here, that I still feel like half of me is fucking missing, because I also have a twin that he knows nothing about. That i’m adopted, that neither me or our father ever told him the truth. And to answer your question, i’m in this park, because it’s where me and my brother were hanging out a few hours before we were arrested and I never saw him again.” the man answers.   
“Fuck. fuck.” Jason mutters, and Tim hit’s pause on the recording as him and Bruce turn to look at him, concern etched into their expressions.   
“Hit play, fuck, hit play. Now” Jason growls, his hands digging into the back of Tim’s chair.   
“What’s going on Jason?” Tim asks, but Jason just turns to glare at him.   
“Hit. Play.” he growls, shaking the chair a little with each word.   
“Yeah, okay” Tim answers, turning back to the screen and hitting play.   
“Why are you telling me this?” Tim asks as the man cracks an eye open, looking up at him from where he lounges.   
“I don’t have anyone else to tell, why not the vigilante who’s been following me around the last couple hours? Besides, who are you going to tell? Batman? Not like he can do anything about it, not like he cares, not like you do either. You were following me because i’m not really an FBI agent, you're right, i’m not. I’m working a case though, there are things in the world that you don’t want to know about. Those things are my job, I won’t be causing you any trouble. I just wanna finish this case and get the fuck out of this city.” the man states, pushing to his feet, stuffing his hands back into his pockets and then exiting the park, Tim stays behind, watching him walk away.   
“Move. How the fuck could you let him walk away?” Jason asks as he pushes Tim lightly from the seat, planting himself in it as he begins running facial recognition on the man using a few frames from before it got dark.   
“I don’t know Jason, he was just some guy that I was following up with. Do you know him?” Tim asks, looking over at Bruce, who is sporting a concerned look on his face, looking down at his son, who is so tense that he’s shaking, clenching and unclenching his fists on top of the desk.   
He stays silent as he digs through his jacket, pulling out a picture that they had only rarely seen, and not since he was brought back. It’s got lines through it from where it was folded in his wallet, and a few stains, no doubt from Jason constantly keeping it on him.   
“Him, that’s who he is.” Jason says, jabbing his finger onto the face of the blond boy who has his arm slung around Jason’s neck, a grin on his face, matching the grin on Jason’s face as they both peer up at the camera, their too-long hair falling into their eyes and their heads tilted together for the picture.   
“When I was eight, me and my twin brother, him. Got arrested for assaulting an officer, an officer who was assaulting our friend. We got enough good hits in to piss the cops the fuck off. When we got to the station they separated us, I haven’t seen him since. I went to juvie for five months, and he went somewhere else. Everybody told me that I was making things up, that kids with no real names couldn’t have brothers. I was eight fucking years old, I couldn’t figure out how to prove that I had a brother. He left me a letter, but it didn’t have enough information in it to find him. Apparently our real father found him, and adopted him. Took him to fucking Kansas. I’ve been looking for him since I was eight. Now he just comes out of fucking nowhere, apparently with another brother in tow. What the fuck?” Jason mutters, slamming his hands down onto the desk, causing the contents to jump a few inches into the air before clattering back down.   
“Calm down Jason, we can figure this out” Bruce starts, but Jason is too worked up for that.   
“Calm down? Yeah, I’ll get right the fuck on that dad. I’ll just calm down, like my fucking twin brother, who I haven’t been able to find since I was eight fucking years old, didn’t just walk into my city and then disappear again. Fuck!” Jason says, this time digging his fingers into his legs, gripping hard enough to leave bruises.   
“He didn’t disappear Jason. He’s still in the city. We have facial recognition running, Bab’s can track him across the fucking world now, we won’t lose him” Bruce reassures him, settling a hand onto the back of Jason’s neck, which has an instantanious effect on him, some of the tension melts from his body, his shoulders hunching forward as he turns his head to look back at his father.   
“I can’t lose him again” Jason mutters, and although he doesn’t want to, he can feel tears stinging his eyes. He can prevent them from falling, but he knows that Bruce and Tim see them.   
“You won’t” Tim answers, rolling the chair that Jason’s in to the side and taking over, easily pulling up where Dean went from the park, tracking him from the bar, where he stayed for a few hours, and then back to his motel room.  
“He’s at his motel. I’ll go visit him tomorrow night, tell him to meet me somewhere. Okay?” Tim asks, concern marring his features as he looks over at his brother, knowing how much this means to him. He’s never seen so much emotion, that wasn’t rage, expressed at one time, especially in front of him and Bruce. The two last people that he decided to let back into his life, the absolute last people that he let himself trust.   
“Okay” Jason mutters, drawing a stone cold mask over his face before he stands up, running his hand through his hair, tugging at it, hard, before letting go and spinning on his heel, although instead of getting on his motorcycle and leaving the cave, he goes to the steps that lead to the Manor, disappearing into the darkness a moment later.   
“Jason has a twin brother” Tim mutters, looking over at his father, his eyebrows raised in shock.   
“And I met him” he tacks on, shaking his head a moment later to clear the surprise, quickly pulling the chair back up to the computer so he can continue to work.   
“Yeah” Bruce murmurs, looking over at where Jason disappeared up the stairs.   
“Are we sure it’s even really him?” Tim asks a moment later, looking up from the computer to stare at Bruce, waiting for an answer.   
“We don’t, but it isn’t hard to find out. It wouldn’t be the furthest one of our enemies has gone to hurt or kill us. It also isn’t probable that that’s what’s happening.” Bruce says, flitting between reassuring and decidedly not reassuring.


	7. Chapter 7

Dean groans as sunlight suddenly blinds him, even though his eyes are closed. He flips over and drags his pillow with him, pulling it over his head to protect his eyes from the harmful rays.   
“Come on Dean, I got us breakfast,” Sam says, laughing at the inhuman sound that emanates from the general area of his brother's face.   
“I’m up” he hears a few minutes later, and he picks up the now not-so-hot cup of coffee that he got for his brother, placing it in his hand while Dean’s eyes are still closed, and he blinks tiredly up at Sam.   
“Thank god” he mutters as he downs the first half cup of coffee, pulling himself over to the small table and plopping down, sighing as he pinches the bridge of his nose, no doubt trying to fend off a headache.   
“We have to go to the police station today, talk to the coroner and take a look at the newest body.” Sam says as he pushes Dean’s bag of food across the table to him.   
“Yeah, I gotta eat, shower, and change. I’ll be ready in twenty.” Dean tells him, stuffing half of his breakfast sandwich in his mouth.   
“Yeah, in the meantime, I'm going to see if I can’t figure out why the demon is choosing these people to possess, and why it’s killing so many of them. It doesn’t make sense, if it wanted to stay under the radar, you would think that it wouldn’t be dropping so many bodies” Sam says, looking over at Dean, who is still stuffing his face, and holds a finger up. Sam waits for him to swallow enough to form a sentence.   
“Unless it wants to be caught,” Dean says, sipping his coffee as he starts on his second sandwich.   
“Why though?” Sam asks, thinking.   
“Maybe it’s trying to lure us in? Maybe it’s looking to catch somebody else’s attention? Either way, we gotta take care of it” Dean says.   
“Yeah, I know Dean, but I think it might help to know what the demon is doing here, what it wants, especially if what it wants is us.” Sam explains, not for the first time.   
“Okay, we still gotta gank the son of a bitch though. Doesn’t matter if it’s trying to get our attention or someone else’s, whether or not it wants to kill us or somebody else. Either way, it’s dropping bodies.” Dean says, making Sam sigh. It’s something that they will never agree on. Sam has learned to, somewhat, accept that.   
“Whatever, i’m gonna look into it.” Sam says, turning his attention to his computer.   
“Have fun, geek boy.” Dean says with a chuckle as he stands and makes his way to the bathroom.   
“Ha ha ha” Sam says, a sarcastic lilt to his voice as he rolls his eyes at his brother's teasing. He can’t help the sigh of relief that escapes him though, at seeing his brother acting normal for the first time since they got here.   
Contrary to what he told his brother, Sam isn’t researching the demon they’re hunting. No, he’s digging into his family’s past. There was always something that didn’t add up, with Dean and his dad. He never paid much attention to it, considering he was a child, but he knew that something wasn’t normal, things that Dean said sometimes that made John sad, or angry. Things that Dean did that made John look at him funny. Sam remembers one time, he couldn’t have been more than six at the time, but he and Dean had been sitting eating dinner one night, when all of a sudden Dean doubled over in pain, scratching at his chest with tears that Sammy hadn’t before witnessed falling from his eyes.   
He remembers those four days, where Dean was in and out of consciousness, he remembers Dean laying limp and coiled around himself like it was the only thing keeping him together as he begged for somebody named Jason. He remembers how he called his dad, how the man huffed an annoyed sigh down the line when Sam told him about Dean, about the things he was saying, and how Dean was scaring him. John told him that Dean was gonna be fine, but to call him if Dean worsened. John was gone for another two weeks, and when he got back, he looked at Dean like he was, disappointed. And then he pulled Dean out of the room by his arm, and when they came back, Dean had that stone cold mask over his face as he “yes, sirred” everything that John said.   
Sam only brought it up once after that, a few months after it had happened, and all Dean would say was that it was nothing. That he had just had a fever, and that Jason wasn’t real. To forget it. Not to bring it up again.   
So he didn’t.   
But he never forgot that look in Dean’s eye when he told him that Jason wasn’t real. It was grief and defiance and love. And Sam hadn’t had the vocabulary for those words at the time, but he was smart enough, and he knew Dean well enough not to believe those words.   
There have been other instances over the years, of Dean calling that name out in the middle of a nightmare, or slurring it out when he’s shitfaced and he sees a dark haired, blue eyed man at whatever bar they had been frequenting.   
No matter how much younger Sam had wanted to believe that Dean wouldn’t lie to him, older Sam knows that if Dean thought it was for the best, Dean would lie to him in a heartbeat. It’s a shitty habit that the two of them picked up from their father. And no matter how many times it comes back to bite them in the ass, they somehow always find themselves back in that position, lying about something or another, under the guise of protecting the other, of them being better off not knowing.   
Sam has always suspected Dean and his father of keeping things from him, but the longer he thinks about it, the more small moments he puts together, the more he realises that they might have been keeping something a whole lot bigger than he ever thought from him.   
He realises a moment later that he’s fallen fast and hard into his own thoughts, completely abandoning the email results that he had logged onto his computer to check out in the first place. He isn’t sure what had him doing this, but a gut feeling had been pushing him towards it for a while, as he searched for whatever it was they had been keeping from him. He knew that confronting Dean wasn’t an option, that if Dean had been keeping something from him for that long, if he had been working so hard to keep something from him, and working with John on it, then Sam demanding answers from his brother wasn’t going to get him anywhere.   
He takes a deep breath, checking that the shower is still running, before he opens the results in his email, though what he finds there makes his breath hitch in his throat and his eyes sting with betrayal.   
The DNA test that should have shown him and Dean as brothers, was in fact, showing them as either “close family” or “first cousins” “what the fuck?” Sam mutters, his eyes glued to the screen as he scrolls through the results screen, so absorbed in his computer, that he doesn’t even notice when the shower shuts off. Doesn’t notice when Dean exits the bathroom. Doesn’t even notice when a few stray drops of water from Dean’s still wet hair fall onto his shoulder as Dean leans over him to look at what he’s doing on the computer.   
“What the fuck?” Dean mutters, finally snapping Sam out of his shock as he slams the computer down on the rickety table before spinning around in his chair to face his brother, or what he thought was his brother, tears pooling in his eyes as he searches Dean’s eyes for an answer of some sort.   
“You’re not my brother?” Sam asks in a hoarse whisper, watching in a detached sort of way as Dean violently flinches back from his words.   
“I am your fucking brother, Sammy. What the fuck is that?” Dean asks, anger clearly displayed on his face, but Sam knows from experience that Dean likes to use anger as a shield for his real emotions.   
“It’s a DNA test, Dean. I’ve always known that you and Dad were lying to me about something. There was just, stuff, that didn’t add up. Little things that didn’t make sense. But we don’t have paperwork, we don’t hardly keep any pictures, we don’t have any family that I could talk to. I figured if you and dad had worked so hard to keep something from me, that you wouldn’t just tell me. This was the only thing I could think of to find some answers. Apparently I wasn’t wrong.” Sam says, a mixture of anger and sadness emanating from his person.   
“Fucking hell Sammy.” Dean mutters, falling silent for a moment as he gathers his wits about him before he speaks again.   
“Mary wasn’t my mom. Not biologically. I only met her a year and a half before she died. But she, she took real good care of me. Treated me like her own, even though she had another baby on the way, even though I was an angry, fucked up little kid. She loved me, and she fed me, tucked me in at night, bandaged my injuries and never gave up on me.” he doesn’t say it, but Sam can hear the silent ‘like Dad did’ “We’re half brother’s, Sammy, biologically. Different mom’s, same dad.” Dean says, his voice quiet and restrained, like he’s bracing for impact, and Sam knows, he knows, that that’s John’s fault too.   
“Who’s Jason?” Sam asks, knowing that this might be the only time he can get a straight answer out of Dean.   
“I didn’t grow up with Mary and John. I grew up here, in Gotham. The only reason that John found me, is cause’ me and my brother, my twin brother, got arrested. We pissed off the cops that picked us up, and when they brought us into the station, they separated us. We weren’t in the system cause’ our mom was a junkie, we weren’t born in a hospital, we never went to the doctor, we never got arrested or anything before then. We were ghosts. I got sent to an orphanage, and I don’t know where they sent Jason. A few months later, after I had given them my name, John and Mary came to pick me up. John had been looking for his kid, one kid, cause’ he didn’t know we were twins. I told them what had happened, how we got separated, and they helped me look for him, stayed in Gotham for a whole month, went to our apartment, went through all the legal channels, but they told us he didn’t exist, and our mom had left the apartment, gone somewhere else. The only thing I have left of him is a bracelet, a batarang, and a picture of the two of us. You’ve probably noticed them around, even if you didn’t know what they meant to me.   
“We couldn’t find him. He hadn’t given anyone his name, and they kept telling me that boys with no names couldn’t have brothers. That Jason Todd didn’t exist. Eventually they packed me up and took me to Kansas with them. When no signs of him ever existing came up, they began to think that I had made him up. That I was just a, fucked up little kid. And I was fucked up, but I didn’t make Jason up. They sent me to therapy, and I learned how to hide my feelings, I learned that they worried about me when I brought him up, so I just … didn’t. I learned that they were worried and scared when I got angry and hit things, when I split my knuckles on doors and trees and other kids' faces. I learned that if I punched the ground in the woods, my knuckles were a lot less likely to split and bruise. I learned how to hide all the things that worried them, how to be polite and charming and how to look happy even when it felt like my chest was collapsing in on itself ….. I don’t know what happened to him. I don’t know if he’s dead or alive or part of a gang or if he ever got out of Gotham. I just know that it still feels like I’m only ever half alive. I know that he was all the best parts of me, he was the good half, and especially after Mary died, I was made to pretend like he didn’t exist. Like he was some figment of my imagination that I made up because I grew up in a rough place. But he isn’t. He isn’t.” Dean says, his elbows on his knees and his head resting in his hands as he stares at his boot clad feet, refusing to make eye contact with his brother.   
“Why didn’t you ever come back to Gotham?” Sam asks, regretting his words as soon as he catches sight of the tears making their way down his brother's cheeks.   
“I looked for him, I looked online, and I checked newspapers and obituaries and I hacked into the police station for any file or cold case or anything. I was always scared to come back though, to find out that he’s been dead, or that he’s caught up in a gang or that….” Dean trails off then, his voice catching in his throat, and Sam waits patiently for Dean to collect himself enough to continue. “Do you remember when you were six, and I got really sick?” Dean asks suddenly, and Sam almost chuckles, having been thinking about that less than ten minutes earlier. “Yeah. You kept going in and out of consciousness, and when you were really out of it, you would beg for Jason, mutter shit that didn’t make any sense at the time. I called Dad, and he told me that you were fine, but to call if you got any worse. When he got back like two weeks later, he dragged you out of the room for a chat. You would never talk about it after that.” I tell him, and the surprise on his face makes me believe that he didn’t expect me to remember much of anything.  
“Yeah. I was, convinced, after that, that Jason was dead. I mean, obviously I can’t prove anything, but, I don’t know. It felt like, he was really gone after that. Like that spot, in my chest, where I always got a bad feeling whenever he was in trouble, was just, gone. It was like having a hole in my chest. And I thought it would never go away, but about two years later, when I was seventeen, it just sort of, filled up, again. I don’t know what it was but, I was, less convinced after that. I guess I've always been scared to find out that he’s really dead. There’s no hope after that. There’s, nothing.” Dean says, a broken note in his voice as he tells his baby brother about his twin.   
“But what if he isn’t, Dean?” Sam asks, reaching out and settling a hand on his older brother's shoulder, waiting for him to raise his head and look at him before continuing.   
“If he’s still out there, we could find him. I could meet my brother, and you could see your twin again. It wouldn’t just have to be you and me anymore.” Sam says, a small, sad smile tipping his lips as he sees the fragile hope in his brother's eyes, and an overwhelming relief, probably because Sam doesn’t think he’s crazy. Doesn’t think he made him up.   
“Okay” Dean whispers, a cautious sort of happiness lifting his expression.


	8. Chapter 8

“They’re serial killers.” Tim murmurs. Wide eyes flitting from screen to screen to Bruce to screen as he processes the information.   
“Excuse me?” Bruce asks, a calm facade blocking any other emotion from coming through.  
“Serial killers. Top of the FBI most wanted list. Pronounced dead three times. That’s the good news. The bad news, is that Dean Winchester, was adopted out of a Gotham orphanage while Jason was in juvie at the exact same time. Brought in at the same time on the same day. Dean Winchester gave them the name Dean Todd when he was arrested, it was changed about a year after he was adopted. His birthday is listed the same as Jason’s. And, last but certainly not least, they had Dean Winchester’s DNA on file from when he was arrested. I ran it against Jason’s. Fraternal twins. I found Jason’s twin brother, and he’s a fucking serial killer.” Tim says, awed and horrified.   
“No” they hear from behind them, and though Tim is surprised, he doesn’t show it, simply spinning around in the Batchair to watch his brother, not sure how Jason is going to react to this information.   
“He fucking isn’t. I don’t care what that says. I know him.” Jason says, conviction thick in his voice.  
“You were eight the last time you saw him, Jason. He could have been through anything since you last saw him. He might not be the kid you used to know.” Bruce says.   
“I fucking know that people change, B, but not that much. He was the good half. I never thought we’d make it out of Gotham, out of our shitty life, but he did. He would insist that mom would be better, and we’d grow up and go live somewhere the sun shone, maybe near a beach. That we’d get a house, with a backyard, and nobody would ever hurt us there, and we wouldn’t have to leave cause’ of anybody else. He used to hold my hand at night and tell me that when we grew up, when we got out, we wouldn’t have to starve, and freeze and never trust anybody else, we wouldn’t have to steal just to stay alive. He put up a good act around other people, about being a tough guy, and he was good at it, he was sarcastic, and he could hold his own in any fight we got ourselves into. But when it was just us, he was, really fucking sweet. He was older than me by about nine minutes, but he might as well have been nine years older than me with how he acted. He was maternal as shit, always making sure I had a blanket, more food, the side of the bed furthest away from the door, he would take beatings meant for me, jumping in and pissing the guy off enough to beat on him instead. He had me behind him in any fight, he was the first one through the window in a sketchy B&E. He used to lock me in closets or out of the apartment when one of our mothers' boyfriends went batshit, taking the brunt of the abuse. He’s not a fucking serial killer. He’s not.” Jason insists.   
Bruce and Tim want to believe him, and because they trust Jason, they decide to hold their judgement until they meet him, both of them able to see how much Jason needs someone on his side about this.  
“Okay. Tim’s gonna go and see if he can’t get him to meet back in that park. We don’t think ambushing him with the information is the way to go, but if we can ease him into it, it should be a calmer exchange for everyone.” Bruce says, watching for a negative reaction from Jason as he speaks.   
“Fine” Jason says, knowing that if he just shows up at his brother's motel room, claiming something that he can’t prove, it won’t end well for either of them. He knows that allowing Tim to go in with a level head and the facts, will allow for, he doesn’t really know. But he does know that it’s a lot less likely to get Dean’s defences up. He doesn’t like finally knowing where his brother is, that he’s alive and okay, but not immediately going to him.   
Logically, it’s the best plan, emotionally, it feels like tearing his heart out of his chest and eating it. It feels like betrayal. Knowing where his twin is, and not going to him.   
“Let me know when we leave, I’ll shadow you there.” Jason says, spinning on his heel and heading up to his room in the manor.   
The first thing he does when he gets there is log onto his computer and pull all the files Tim had open downstairs, it takes him about an hour to sift through everything, and when he’s done he drags his hands down his face, pushing back tears as he tries to connect his twin from years ago with the man depicted in these files. It doesn’t add up. “What happened to you, Dean?” he asks, knowing that an answer won’t be coming, at least not until he confronts his brother himself. Gets those answers for himself.


	9. Chapter 9

Dean sighs, dusting his hands off as he looks Sammy over for injuries, making sure that the demon they just sent back to hell didn’t cause any irreversible damage to his baby brother. When all he sees are a few scratches and bruises, he turns his gaze to himself, cataloging a broken rib, a twisted knee, a possible concussion, and a few other scrapes and bruises. When Sam asks him if he’s alright, he lies, like he usually does, telling him that he’s just a little banged up.   
Sam’s exhausted after the last few hours, but Dean’s too wired to sleep, so when Sam gets out of the shower and flops down on his bed with all the grace of a beached whale, Dean hops into a quick shower, emerging a few minutes later, dressed in new clothes, and much to Sam’s somewhat sleepy concern, heads out again, telling Sam he’s just heading to the bar to grab a few beers.   
He catches sight of his new favorite shadow as he heads out of the motel parking lot, foregoing the car as he sets out on foot, not sure where exactly he’s heading, but allowing his feet to carry him to his destination.   
He stops by a few of his past haunts before he realises what he’s doing, and it’s about that time that his shadow draws closer, close enough to hear Dean if he felt like talking. “You know, you’ve got a tail of your own” Dean says, pretty certain that Red Robin can spot a sloppy tail, but deciding to let him know that he can as well.   
“I know.” is all his shadow says, jumping from the roof he had been perched on to fall into step next to Dean. “how about we head back to the park?” he asks after a few blocks of companionable silence. “Yeah, sure. Any reason for the visit tonight?” Dean asks, turning to look at the young man who’s keeping step beside him, his birdlike costume blending with the shadows as they walk through dark city, the air crisp in their lungs, even through the cloying scent of garbage, decay, and despair.   
“I looked into you, last night, after I got back home. Your secret, it was, stuck in my head. I couldn’t ignore it, couldn’t, forget it. I’ve got a camera in my cowl, it records everything I encounter in a night, so that if something happens, my associates can review footage, so that I can review the footage on fights to try and see where I went wrong, what I need to improve, stuff like that. I showed someone who I trust the footage of our conversation, I needed a second opinion on whether or not to help you out, looking for your brother. Little did I know, Jason Todd, your brother, was the person I was showing the footage to. I was skeptical at first, but then I noticed the matching bracelets, and he told me about a picture and a batarang you would have as well. I did a deeper dig after that, adoption records have your name down as Dean Todd, before you were adopted by your biological father and his wife and took their names a year later. You and Jason were arrested on the same day, but while you were sent to an orphanage, where you eventually gave them your name, he was sent to Juvie, where he gave them a fake name. I did a DNA test after that, I already had Jason’s on file, and yours was easy to track down, what with the multiple arrests and all, and after a quick few tests, it was confirmed. Fraternal twins, separated at eight years old.” Red Robin says, knowing that Jason is listening in through the comms, as well as watching their interaction from the rooftops.   
Dean continues walking on autopilot, his body working completely separately from his mind as he tries to process this information. His mind is going a mile a minute, and he feels like Red is waiting on him to say something, but he’s sort of in shock. Finding his brother when he wasn’t even looking for him, it’s not something he had thought about before, nothing he had even considered. So he’s glad when Red starts talking again, giving him time to come up with words for what he’s feeling.   
“He panicked when he realised it was you. Yelled at me for letting you walk away from me. After a little research and some talking, we decided that him showing up at your motel in the middle of the night claiming to be your brother with no proof aside from a few easily cloned items as proof would have immediately gotten your defences up. But since we had already met, and you had already told me about it, I figured if I talked to you first, let you know the facts, showed you the DNA test” Tim pauses here to pull a piece of paper from his belt, handing it over to the silent Dean “and sort of gave you a few minutes to process, that it would be, easier on everyone.” Tim says, his pace slowing down as they reach the gates of the park, Dean still operating on autopilot beside him as he opens the gates, heading in first and letting Dean follow him. Dean’s eyes are glued to the piece of paper in his hands, reading it over, and then again, before finally meeting Tim’s eyes. Or at least, the whites of the cowl where his eyes should be.   
“Splash this on exposed skin and nick yourself with this.” Dean says after a moment of indecision, tossing a flask and a knife towards Tim, who only hesitates a moment before doing as Dean asked, raising an eyebrow as he hands the items back at the man's nod.   
There are more than a few beats of silence between them before Dean speaks again.  
“Where is he?” he asks then, his voice breaking from the hard tone it had been just a minute earlier into that of a scared little boy, and though Tim’s got enough emotional defences to shield himself from the most charming of conmen, he feels sympathy flood his veins at the grief and pain in Dean’s eyes.   
Tim is saved from having to answer as Jason drops out of one of the many trees in this overgrown park, landing a few feet to Tim’s left. Tim retreats then, trusting Jason enough to leave him alone with a potentially dangerous man, knowing that he’ll greatly appreciate the privacy, so it’s as they stare at each other, sizing the other up, that Tim exits the park, taking himself a few blocks down before stopping, staying close enough to be backup if his brother needs him.   
Back at the park, Jason finally moves, just enough to tug his sleeve up, exposing the leather bracelet on his wrist, Dean following his motion a moment afterwards. Green eyes meet blue in a pain filled stare, neither of them really believing what they’re seeing for a moment, but that look. The one filled with a shared grief and longing for the other half of their souls, has them colliding in an embrace that feels more like home than anything either of them have experienced since they parted almost twenty years earlier. They both feel oddly melancholic, happiness blending in with the grief of twenty years lost without the other. The pain and sadness of their almost two decades spent apart has tears falling from both of their eyes as they grasp each other tight, the mutual thought that if they let go, the other will be gone forever lingering in their minds.   
“I never thought I'd see you again” Jason murmurs into his brother's hair, having gained a few inches on him since they’d last seen each other.  
“I was convinced you were dead” they say in tandem, both of them pausing a moment before laughing out hysterical laughter at something that used to happen as regularly as breathing.   
“Fuck. We have a lot to talk about.” Dean says, his arms still wrapped around his brother, his soul feeling whole for the first time since he was eight years old.   
“Hell yeah we do. You missed a whole bucket load of shit.” Jason replies, gaining a laugh from Dean.   
“You don’t know the half of it” Dean mutters, both of them finally feeling secure enough that the other isn’t leaving to release their grip on each other, and instead walk shoulder to shoulder over to a low stone wall, which they sit with their backs against. Pressed together shoulder to ankle, just like they had that night in the police cruiser.   
It’s then that they fill each other in on all the important bits of their lives, and some of the not so important ones.   
Dean tells him about Mary and John, about Sammy.   
Jason tells him about Bruce and Dick, about Alfred.   
Dean tells him about monsters and hunting and how it all started.   
Jason tells him about Batman and Robin and dying.   
Dean tells him about the Apocalypse and Hell.   
Jason tells him about the pit rage.   
Dean tells him about the nightmares.   
Jason tells him about Tim and Damian.   
Dean tells him about Cas and Bobby.   
Jason tells him about Red Hood and the empire he’s created.   
Dean tells him about Purgatory and him and Sam’s reputation.   
Jason tells him about their mother's final overdose when he was twenty two.   
Dean tells him about their father sacrificing himself to save Dean.   
Jason tells him about all the ways Bruce is a shitty dad.   
Dean tells him about all the ways John was a shitty dad.   
Jason tells him all the ways Bruce was an amazing dad.   
Dean tells him about before Mary died, when John was a great dad.   
Jason tells him about missing him, about the pain and the grief, the sadness and the rage.   
Dean tells him all the same things.   
They laugh and they cry.   
They learn all about each other's lives, the good, the bad, and the ugly.   
They never once lie to each other, because that was something John taught Dean, something that Bruce taught Jason. Before their fathers, before their mentors, all they had was each other. And they never lied to each other.   
The sun is cresting the horizon, their throats are sore from talking, and their asses are sore from sitting on the cold hard ground the whole night, but neither of them have felt such a pure sense of happiness as far back as they can remember and it’s worth it.


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The End

“Sammy is gonna be worried about me” Dean says when there’s a lull in their conversation, the sun having risen enough to fall over his face and most of his chest.   
“Yeah, Timmy’s probably gone home by now, but they’ll be worried too, seeing as they thought you were a serial killer.” Jason says, chuckling at the thought.   
“Nah, I think if Cas was enough to convince you, he’ll be enough to convince them.” Dean replies.   
They continue to sit in silence long after that, both of them thinking about what the future will bring, what with their twin back in their lives.   
“Hey Jason?” Dean asks after a few minutes, bumping his shoulder into Jason’s.   
“Yeah?” Jason replies, bumping his shoulder back against Dean’s.   
“What’d you think if … if you came with me and Sammy for a while? Not like, forever, or anything. But just, just for a while.” Dean asks, seeming to have trouble getting the question out, no doubt bracing for a rejection.   
“Yeah. yes. I- I think that would be good. It would give me and Sam time to get to know each other.” Jason says, a dopey ass smile on his face.   
“Hey Dean?” Jason asks after a few moments of silence.   
“Yeah?” Dean replies, an amused smile on his face at the mirror conversation from just a minute ago.   
“What if you and Sammy stuck around here for a few days before we left. You could, get to know my family a little. Convince them you're not serial killers before I take off on a road trip with you.” Jason says, laughing lightly at his joke.   
“Fuck yeah! You know I did always want to meet Batman.” Dean tells him, finally taking that first step and standing up, groaning as he does so, his injuries irritating him. Jason follows suit, a similar groan falling from his lips as his own injuries are irritated with the movement.   
H

Although they had planned on splitting up and going to their respective families, they somehow find themselves standing outside the door of Dean and Sam’s motel room, Jason’s hands stuffed deep in his pockets as he tries to hide his nervous tics while Dean fumbles with the key.   
“Where the hell have you been, Dean?” is the first thing they hear when the door opens, Sam lacing his boots up as he sits with his back to them, though as soon as he registers the silence, he slowly spins around, his eyes widening at the sight of the man standing next to Dean.   
“Dean?” he questions, not wanting to jump to conclusions before knowing who's standing in front of him.   
“This is Jason. Our brother.” Dean says, a note of nervousness in his voice as he introduces them.   
“Hi” Jason says, rocking back on his heels, something that both him and Dean have in common when they’re nervous about something like this, something potentially emotionally damaging.   
“Hello” Sam replies, a hopeful smile lighting his face as he steps forward to greet Jason.   
H

It’s only a few hours later that the three of them load up into the Impala, on their way to Wayne Manor to meet Jason’s family, and to break the news that Dean and Sam aren’t serial killers.   
Damian greets them with suspicion, though without the usual hostility, as he was instructed to do so under threat of disembowelment by Jason.   
Tim greets them warmly, if a bit tiredly, having already made up his mind that they didn’t actually kill people, having gone back through all of the evidence, putting together that most of the murders they were accused of started when the Winchester brothers were in another state, and that the murders stopped after the Winchesters arrived.   
Dick greets them both with overly excited hugs, more than excited to have two new additions to his family, and there was absolutely no hesitation in him, as soon as he realised that Jason had brothers, Dick accepted that he also had two more brothers.   
Alfred greets them cordially, as he does everyone, but with a warmer undercurrent than he has for other guests, having already known who they were, and that they would more than likely become the newest members of his family as well.   
Bruce, surprisingly, immediately drops the ‘Brucie Wayne’ act, and greets them with a heavy dose of suspicion, which, after Tim explains his reasoning for them not being serial killers, and Dean and Sam explain their reasoning, with a little help from Cas, his suspicion falls to the background, instead being overtaken by an openness that none of his children were expecting from him. But he knew, that if Jason had family, they would soon enough find themselves part of the Wayne family as well, whether they liked it or not. His sons had a way of adopting strays, especially if those strays happened to be related to their brother. He has no idea where they got that from.   
H

Though they had only planned on staying for a few days to get to know Jason’s family (and to see the Batcave) they end up staying for almost a month, Dick having immediately moved them from their motel into the Manor.   
The Batboys wanted to know everything there was to know about hunting and monsters and angels and demons. They wanted to learn how to take out certain threats they hadn’t even known existed, and the Winchesters were more than happy to teach them, to get them up to date, and to give them access to the program that Charlie had created for hunters.   
In return, Sam and Dean wanted to know everything there was to know about their suits, about the gadgets, the villains they fought and the Justice League. How each of them had gotten into the life, and how they had picked out their individual identities after passing on the Robin Mantle (voluntarily or not) and the Batboys, having been taught so much about the Winchesters world, were more than happy to return the favor, each of them opening up about the easier parts of their pasts.   
The Bat’s (minus Jason) were sad to see the Winchesters leave, especially since they were taking one of them with them. But they knew that they’d be back. That Jason couldn’t just leave his empire in the hands of his lieutenants forever.   
So it was as the three brothers threw their bags into the back of the Impala, that the rest of the Batclan came tumbling out of the house, snacks for the ride in a bag held by Alfred, a credit card with an unlimited limit (for business purposes) tucked into the side of the bag by Bruce. Dick hands out bear hugs like candy, and tucks a new and improved first aid kit into the trunk along with their bags. Tim slings a giant bag full of gadgets and weapons that he had been working on, specially designed and adjusted to fit Winchester's needs, into their trunk as well, and Dean doesn’t think his trunk has ever been as stuffed full of stuff as it is now. Damian, who had formed an odd sort of attachment to Dean, after sparring with the man every day for three weeks, slipped a set of six daggers into the man's jacket pocket as he tentatively hugs him goodbye.   
“Stay safe, Boys” Alfred calls as they move to get into the car.   
“We’ll bring him back in one piece, promise.” Dean calls out as he swings into the driver's seat, Sam and Jason arguing over who gets the front seat.   
“I am six foot four! I don’t fit in the back.” Sam is arguing.   
“We’re the same height, dumbass, and I'm bigger!” Jason argues back, and although it looks like Sam wants to argue, he knows that Jason is, actually, bigger than him.   
It’s once they’re all loaded into the car, with all of their things, that Bruce finally leans down into the drivers window, looking each boy in the eye.   
“Keep each other safe. Come back alive, and in one piece. All of you.” he says, his eyes boring in Dean’s as he says that, knowing that Dean needs to hear that the most, that he would never hesitate to sacrifice himself for the people he loves.   
Dean swallows thickly, his brows furrowing at the paternal look in Bruce’s eye, the one that was always missing from his father's eyes when he looked at Dean, the one that slowly faded from his expression after Mary died.   
“Okay” Dean agrees, taking a deep breath, and shaking the feeling of melancholy off as Bruce stands, stepping back and letting Dean pull out of the driveway, his twin next to him, and their baby brother in the back. All they had in front of them was the open road, and for the first time in a long time, Dean felt truly free.

**Author's Note:**

> Thoughts? good? bad? meh? lemme know what you think. :)


End file.
